OnLive, a hugely popular on-demand gaming service which came to Android late last year, announced tonight the release of L.A. Noire: Touch Edition, which Founder and CEO Steve Perlman dubs "BY FAR the highest-performance game ever designed for tablets."

For those unaware, OnLive features 25 other touch-playable titles, some of which have been totally redesigned to support touch interaction. L.A. Noire is the latest title to get a touch makeover and is, according to Perlman, "the highest-performance console video game developed specifically for touch-enabled play via mobile cloud gaming.

OnLive, the company that has already revolutionized gaming is now gunning for making the same kind of splash in OS virtualization. And not just any OS virtualization, but Windows 7 in the cloud, for free - a set of words I never thought I'd write in the same sentence.

Something worth pointing out right off the bat is OnLive's "groundbreaking video compression technology" that is used to stream the Desktop cloud to your tablet.

Eliminating the need for huge downloads and long wait times, OnLive gives users access to high quality mobile games from just about anywhere they may find themselves, using either touch controls or an OnLive wireless controller (available here).

All you need is an Android 2.3+ device and an internet/data connection.

Last night, the HTC Flyer received an update that included the OnLive viewer, allowing users to get a glimpse of what the future of mobile gaming should look like. Naturally, those of us that don't have a Flyer want to peep into said future, too - so, in typical XDA fashion, the APK was extracted from the update so it could be installed on other devices. It's worth noting that this is the viewer, not the player, so you'll only be able to watch the action.

On paper, the OnLive game system seems like a revolution in gaming: instead of using your own console or hardware to play games, OnLive's servers sync and render gamplay on their own servers and stream it back to you in 720p. This would theoretically allow you to play any game you wanted at high settings, regardless of your available hardware.

Picture courtesy of Engadget

OnLive's taken the chance to expand from an initial PC experience to include their own microconsole; however, it looks like they're expanding to the Android tablet market, as well.